Chapter 7
The near naps that I get are fitful, and I leave the bed for a bit so that at least David can get a break from my anxiety.
But I catch him looking at me when I’m curled up on the patio chair or when I’m looking at my phone, waiting for updates.
I try to give him a reassuring smile, but I can’t imagine I’m convincing him that I’m anything but a mess.
When my phone finally dings, both Dave and I jolt.
My hands are shaking so damn hard that I can’t even read the stream of texts that come through.
“Can you help me?” My voice is shaking as I hold out the phone.
I both want to see and don’t want to see what’s coming my way.
I confess what I’ve only confessed to myself before. “He’s my home base. My family. Like, the only family I have,” I sputter.
Dave rushes over and sits beside me as he scans the texts.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he says immediately, and his words make me almost collapse.
“Patrick is fine. From RobBob. Patrick is doing great! Surgery went incredibly well. Longer than expected, but he’s in the ICU now.
Still out of it, but Katrina and I are here with him.
Will let you know when he wakes up. And from Katrina: Patrick powered through like a champ! The worst is over.”
My wild laugh-cry is one of relief. “Okay, that fucker. I knew he’d be okay.”
I mean, I didn’t know he’d be okay. At all. Honestly, I thought my best friend would be dead by the time I woke up after my half sleep.
I text with both of them for a few minutes.
With Dave’s help, I’m able to scoot back into bed and finally decompress. And absolutely pass out until late morning.
The curtains are gently drawn when I’m nudged awake.
“Thought you’d want to be up for this.”
“Breakfast?” I ask. “Too many good smells.”
“Yes. Overly stuffed omelets. Dowsed in hollandaise. And cappuccino.” Before I can even sit up and thank Dave for even thinking about room service, he holds up my phone. “How about something better than room service?”
I rub my eyes as I realize Dave has us on a video call with Patrick.
“Sorry, but I answered. Hope that’s okay.” He hands me a cappuccino.
Groggily, I take a sip before setting it down and then taking his hand. This is so, so okay.
“New Friend Dave is cool.” Patrick’s voice is weak, and he has a big, kind of alarming bandage around his head.
“He is very cool,” I agree as I rub my eyes.
We both get quiet.
Fuck.
This is all so bad, and neither of us knows what to say.
“I know. I don’t look great,” he admits.
“I think you look alive. Just with fancy head dressings.”
Patrick loosely waves a hand. “Fucking pickles, of all things.”
“You’re gonna be okay.”
“Agreed. No way a pickle truck is gonna take me out.” He clears his throat. “I don’t even goddamn like pickles.”
I’m on board. Sort of. “That would be an impossibly stupid way to die. Offensive even. I prohibit it. I’ll never eat another—”
Patrick shakes the phone and laughs. “Ugh, you liar girl! No, I don’t care if you still want to fucking eat pickles.”
“Even all the—” I start to ask tentatively while I give him a little smile.
“Yes, even all the things I hate. Jalapenos, kimchi, olives, and whatnot. Those pepperoncini things you put on every sandwich.”
“Then I will think of you fondly every time I enjoy a pickle-y item.”
He starts to react, then puts a hand to his bandage. “Don’t make me laugh. I have me just a wee bit of a head wound,” he says with an accent. Even in his state, he’s still all about his Irish roots.
And then we stop talking and look at each other, silent for a few moments, and I know both of us are awash with relief now that the worst is over.
“I love you, Patrick.”
He clutches his head, but still nods. “Love you back, Diana. And don’t fucking cry because then I’ll cry, and that will hurt my poor smashed-up brain.”
And so, for his sake, I do not let any happy tears fall. At least until after we hang up.
After a good, relieved cry in the hotel bathroom, I douse my face in freezing water to help the eye swelling that’s sure to show up tomorrow, and I emerge. Drained but happy.
David has made the bed and even sharply folded down a corner; it looks as though housekeeping came by. I’m surprised there’s not a chocolate on my pillow. There’s no way that he didn’t hear me bawling my eyes out just now, and I have no idea why this guy I just met has not run.
Not only has he not run, but he has waited me out, and now he’s ushering me into bed and turning off the lights when I am clearly so wrecked and so drained.
“Let me scoop you,” he says as we both get under the covers.
“Let you what me?” It’s hard to believe I’m actually laughing right now.
“Scoop you.” His voice is so cute, so silly, and he’s so clearly trying to comfort me as he cutely wrestles me in under the covers. “Like, the big-spoon, little-spoon thing the kids talk about.”
I roll onto my side and back up against him for a cuddle. “Like this?”
Dave touches my shoulder, then slowly moves his hand down my arm, then over my waist. He pulls me in closer. “Yes. A scoop.”
It takes more than a few minutes, but I relax my back into his chest and sigh into Dave’s hold. “I’m liking being scooped.”
I’m liking how I fall asleep without nightmares and how I wake up rested.
Dave and I spend the next day and night together. I’m well aware that he’s leaving, that this non-romantic thing is ending soon.
On the last morning, after I devour another full room-service breakfast and am called back into bed to work off that great meal, I pull up the sheets and throw a leg over his. “Okay, new nickname idea. Best-Ever Dave?” I suggest.
“That sounds like I’m the best Dave you’ve slept with. As though you’ve had sex with a lot of Daves.” Yet he snuggles me in.
“Oh, not what I meant.” I giggle and offer an alternative. One that’s very truthful. “How about just the simple The Best I’ve Ever Had?”
His hold, the loving snuggle he has me in, tightens.
Another day together confirms that I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go back home to my work, and the demands, and the bullshit. It’s impossible to figure out how to get out of it, even though Dave got me thinking about it.
Yet I know this trip was a fantasy come to life and not one that can be anything enduring. Because all fantasies are temporary. Built to fade.
His gentle, secure embrace that night is almost too much. I have never been held like this, and I’m torn between staying awake in his hold and falling back asleep and getting a real, restorative rest.
But instead, we are soon impossibly entwined again, rhythmically together until dawn peeks through the curtains.
When Dave lifts up my shirt on that final morning and kisses and breathes against my stomach, “Armand Assante,” I roll back and pull the comforter over my head, laughing as he pulls away.
SVU expert and beautiful bastard.
Before he leaves, he has a cute ask. To take a bath together. “Not even a sexy one,” he says. “Just a bath.”
I’m not about to refuse a soak with this guy. So, we sit together on the bathroom floor as the tub fills, the sound of the water hitting so loudly that we fortunately don’t have to talk. We strip and step in.
I have flashbacks now that I can’t mention, but ones that make me smile. Baths that aren’t sexy, but still intimate.
“I really loved meeting you,” he whispers.
“And I really loved meeting you. Thanks for scooping me.” I smile as I move through the hot water and lean back against his chest. “If I ever see you again, will you make me a lobster roll from your food truck? The kind with butter? I’ve never had that. Only ones with mayonnaise.”
He strokes my hair. “You mentioned that.”
“Oh, right.” I vaguely remember.
“It’d be my pleasure. It’d also be the best ever.”
But we both know we’ll probably never see each other again.
This was just vacation fun. Escapism at its best.
And this how we leave. With everything just as it was. Ideal and impossible to find again.
Just before the door closes behind him, I call out our last Special Victims Unit guest star. “Bradley Whitford.”
“I heard that,” he replies, his voice fading as he slowly walks away.
Then I get a text.
Dave: He was on twice as different characters.
Me: Yes. The dementia episode was both beautiful and painful.
Dave: It was.
Goddammit. Dave really was.